LETTER: Let’s be reasonable

Editor,

Mr. Wolfe’s position is that Israeli and Palestinian actions are condemned equally and “logically.” Israeli actions are retaliations for Palestinian suicide bombing attacks.

I disagree with Mr. Wolfe’s statement of “Both positions are clearly in the right and clearly in the wrong.” The facts on the ground do not support this argument, and I think we should go a step forward to stand up with our moral standard.

I don’t support suicide bombings and would like to see an end for this cycle of violence. However, to be able to stop it, we should think of the reasons behind it. 

Did these suicide bombings come out of the blue? The answer is no.

Although Palestinians have been subjected to all kinds of oppression for 50 years, suicide bombings arose only in the last 20 years.

As early as 1948, the Palestinian village Der-yassin among many others, was attacked by the Irgun and stern gangs, and more than 100 men, women and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City where they were found by Hind Husseini and brought to her home, which later became an orphanage. So why did the Palestinians not blow themselves then?

If suicide attacks are brutal acts carried out by few individuals in the recent years, many more vicious acts such as assassination and kidnapping of civilians, demolition of homes and bombarding refugee camps and villages with Apache helicopters and F-16s are committed by the mighty Israeli “forces” — not individuals. Even the Palestinians who are expelled to neighboring countries were massacred in their refugee camps such as Sabra and Shatella, which are both sites of massacres.

Israeli attacks on the Palestinians and neighboring countries is condemned in 68 United Nations resolutions for the period from 1955 to 1992, or in other words, more than once a year. I don’t think the United Nations is anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.

This fact suggests that Israeli forces actions are not only “oppression of certain freedoms and human rights” as portrayed by Mr. Wolfe. 

Unlike Mr. Wolfe, I feel for the innocent victims of suicide bombings and I feel that the same sympathy and support should go toward 2,000 Palestinians, including 311 children who were killed during the last two years in their homes and schools and definitely not on their way to blow themselves in Israel.

The suicide bombings are the symptom of a more dangerous disease that includes grave human rights abuses that are still going on and on called “military occupation.” Regardless of the deceiving names. It’s the Israeli occupation that provokes the suicide bombings.

Ashraf Shaqadan